Keepod: Can a $7 stick provide billions computer access?
m.bbc.co.uk
m.bbc.co.uk
I was going to worry about how much memory was required, but it looks like Android 4.4 can work with 512 meg of RAM.
While this feels like a good idea it's often terrible. Have a look at the agbogoshie e-waste dump in Accra, Ghana, for an example. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552994)
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/dec/14/to...
Keepod has been discussed here before. It looks like an interesting experiment, although I would prefer it if people had access to more open systems.
Why does every student as opposed to just every classroom need one (with multiple accounts supported)?
And why is the base price $5? Flashing is $.32 (http://www.usb2usb.com/pre-loaded-data-usb-flash-drive.htm) on a $3.41 drive (http://www.usb2usb.com/marketing_series_flash_drive_costs.ht...) = $3.73* ... that's $1.27 less then $5.
This doesn't sound like much until you are doing 150,000 of them. Now we have $190,500 that's not accounted for on top of the existing $300,000 deposited into their personal checking account.
Someone can do this same project for 40% less (at $4 versus $7) and still walk away with $40k+ - a much more typical salary for a social worker.
Or they could do a multiple-account, single device strategy and probably get away with an astonishing 98% drop in price. Of course, there's no money in that. ;-)
* - We can't see the price for 7500+ from this vendor - but I think that a cost of about $3.55 is fair for the volumes the founders are talking about - and there's probably better offers if you call around - so maybe $3.45 is more realistic. It's certainly not $5.00.
Then there is flashing the software. And creating the software. And creating documentation. And distributing the devices. And providing support.
They're not just selling a USB stick, nor selling a USB stick that has a bit of software on it.
They are possibly testing the devices on a range of older hardware, and distributing that older hardware too.
I think this is a pivot - didn't they used to aim this at people worried about security?
The software is Android, it's maintained by Google and already exists - as does the documentation.
The distribution of the USB stick, as the article states, is through http://www.liveinslums.org/.
The duo also are explicitly not distributing the older hardware - although I guess they could be testing it.
They surely have added some software to an existing Android ISO. Was that their personal investment? No.
People gave them $40,000 to do that through indiegogo. The $90 donation point was a 200% markup from the base price (which I believe is 40% inflated) - They were paid a disclosed $28,000 (probably closer to $32,500) to make the product. That's 3 months on a handsome 6-figure salary to write essentially a few shell scripts.
Now they have a for-profit android-based distro that They Are Selling to impoverished African children which was built through donations.
They will pitch it as "We need your money to help the children" (and, ahem, our pocket books).
Also, they want to sell a separate USB device for each child as opposed to 1 which supports multiple accounts for a single classroom (or more likely, single school). So they sell 80 to a school where 2 would do fine.
Why? I'm guessing it has to do with the "for-profit" part. It's more profitable for them if each kid has to manually reboot the computer and switch the USB stick then it is to just switch accounts.
How is this not just a clever scam?
You do realize that the usage pattern will eventually be 1-stick-per-computer, right? And the computer-to-student ratio is many dozen to 1? That means 95% of these will be sitting around. 1 stick with 39 spares.
These guys could earn more not doing this. One can criticize the project based on if it will work but lets not say this is some get rich scam.
EDIT: Also, from the article: "Mr Bahar and Mr Imbesi's plan is for locally employed workers to buy the flash drives on the open market, install the operating system and a few essential apps, and then sell them on for a small gain. The final price would be $7 (£4.15), delivering about a $2 profit on each device that would help cover wages and the further expansion of the project." - so the $2 profit doesn't even go to Keepod.
2) If you're someone like me who drops in to distrowatch.com occasionally, you might think a tweaked version of Puppy or Tiny Core would be more appropriate for older computers. And you'd be right in terms of hardware requirements, but...
3) Android is supported by Skynet, er, Google with massive resources. The installed base in the US is north of 80M and it has support for 47 languages.
So it's really the answer to that classic question, "what's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" If I were in the project manager's shoes Android would be at the top of my list as well.
How does this solve the problem?
I know, it's not exactly solving the right problem, is it? Also, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with storing all my data on a flimsy, easily-misplaced USB drive.
- are slow and virus-ridden.
- don't belong to you, and you have shared or sporadic access (not a good place to leave your files).
- don't have the software you want, and you can't install programs (or do much else) 'in case you break it'.
There's not ONE overriding problem to be solved, this is just one way for people using shared computers to get their own secure and consistent environment. Plenty of people (in Western countries) carry around USB sticks with their files and some portable apps; this is just a logical step further.
Turns out "The Brick" was just the singular aluminum ingot that the iMac is carved from.
That would give us what Jobs said he had had for himself for years, in _1997_. See http://dcurt.is/steve-jobs-and-the-cloud
Whether that platform will be built out of a phone I don't know but it's probably likely as economies of scale on phone production do drive down the price of the hardware.
It's not going to replace a computer for everyone though (I like my three screens too much for that) but I could see the utility.
It would add to the cost, but customization per geographic region would be good: farmer almanac type information, etc. If children could demonstrate to their parents some utility then the parents would be less likely to sell the devices for food, etc.